Godwin's law may have been a good idea at one time (although I doubt it - 'the act of censorship is always worse than that which is censored.') but it kills many interesting discussions now.
As I always understood it, Goodwin's law was an observation, that if Nazis were mentioned, the S/N ratio of the thread was doomed to drop to 0, and not recover. Not an act of censorship.
They had, if I recall, a big fluffy GUI that
operated as a front end to gcc/gdb/etc, basically
an IDE. Even Stallman agrees that
system("gcc -c -o foo.o foo.c"); is not creating
a derivative work of gcc, and basically, that's
all their thing did.
And in defense of the person complaining about the.so file, it was, IIRC, not designed in the first
place as a library. They took his program, librarified it (under the GPL), then "just linked"
to it, to create their program.
And the point is, you're not allowed to link
to GPL code, unless yours is GPL'ed. Sorta like "you can't link to our library without paying".
The point of the GPL, however, is to skew the
payoff matrix away from prisoners dilemma, to
one where there's just one optimal payoff, by
pushing down the payoff for defecting, by introducing the "we sue your sorry ass" option
to punish defectors. This makes defecting less
desirable, and not a short-term gain...
Admittedly, life being what it is, it doesn't
always work out to work that way, and people
think they won't get caught, etc....
None have perfectly reached their optimal strategy, but the incidence of "I want a dollar, give it to me or I will hit you with this stick" is much lower than the number of people who have access to sticks and would like an additional dollar, so the trust building thing we call "law" and laws against "robbery" must be doing some good.
They had some proprietary add-ons, but as I gather, most of
their revenue was from support contracts, and
programming contracts (make GCC work on our new
computer).
It's difficult to imagine human populations in the few thousands somehow wiping out large indigenous species through over hunting.
I dunno, look how fast the introduction of new species can seriously screw up an environment. Rats are the classic example, since 1500 or so,
rats carried on ships by people have seriously
disrupted tons of local ecologies.
SELinux also has support for various forms of mandatory access control, and the related (and necessary for the same) labelling of data with
security-related information.
Shoving all that under "capabilities" and then
arguing that since win2k outshines linux in the
granularity of it's permissions model borders on dishonest. Security-feature wise, SELinux is
in a whole different ballpark (B1) from both win2k and Linux.
Pretending that that patch was necessary to get
Linux to be as secure as NT is dishonest (or ignorant).
that in the land of Linux things like file sharing are a big
deal and it's a big deal if you have Samba running, or WU-FTP, etc, whereas having the server running in
NT/2000 is a no-brainer, and most people install the inetinfo services without a second thought. Same goes
for DNS, DHCP, etc. etc. etc.
Huh? "apt-get install apache".
what a big deal that was. Really. I'm terrified of doing "apt-get install samba" now.
Christ, Redhat installs too damn many daemons on every machine. FTP a big deal? I have to go to new installs and turn it off.
I'm not saying it's harder on NT, but man, I wanna know what you've been smoking to think it's a big deal on linux.
Ok, so the energy is deposited in a larger volume,
thus decreasing the energy density, and
consequently the temperature gain above normal.
I do not mean to rule out the possiblity of physiological effects by this argument, but they will, at these energy densities, not be related
to heating. Comparing the energy from
your phone to a bag of sugar being dropped on
your head is a silly comparison. A more direct
one is one involving energy transfer due to
electromagnetic radiation, which I provided,
and demonstrated that it was, in pure energy terms,
small.
It's approximately also the energy in the sunlight
falling on a 10" square, on a dim day. On a bright
day you've got at least that much heating your
skill. So... Don't use cell phones (especially
don't point the antenna at your eye, duh.), and
stay inside on sunny days.
Yes, I'm sure those disks were never used for
classified data. I don't think that the govt.
would screw tha up.
As far as giving the drives to schools being as
good as handing them to the baddie-o-week, no,
it's not. Massive disappearances of hard drives
from schools would be noticed by the schools, reported to the feds, and appropriate action taken.
Furthermore recovering overwritten data does require something
more than spending 10 minutes using it in a classroom. The data may, or may not be recoverable once overwritten, and the drive may, or may not be accessable to them. Oh, yes, it's possible that
there will be some leakage of somewhat sensitive
data, but it's going to be a very, very, low bandwidth channel, and not very profitable to try to exploit.
Nuclear testing's been mentioned. Other massive computing efforts include theoretical protien chemistry, astronomy, particle accelerator analysis, weather simulation, materials reserch
(more theoretical chemistry). Getting good
excited state properties of molecular systems
scales as the 12th power of your basis set size. Doubling the size of the system you're looking at increaces computational effort by a factor of 4000. It's like, real easy to chew up unlimited amounts of computer power in computational science.
There's the coal ash too, it doesn't all seep into
the atmosphere. The coal ash is even 100ppm od so
Uranium..... The ash heaps make pretty good
memorials themselves though...
You know... socialism doesn't really have anything to do with freedom, except with regards to property.
Besides, aren't you telling us what freedom means?
(not, btw, to dispute that the GPL makes more restrictions than the BSD license, but it is inaccurate to put "socialist" as the diametrical opposite of "freedom")
Ok, so how about telling GE to stop dumping PCB's
in the rivers? It's certainly more profitable
than disposing of them safely.
RMS believes
that the creation of proprietary software has negative externalities. He will, even, admit that
they're smaller than, say, dumping PCB's in the
rivers. But still, it is a valid reason to tell
companies not to do that thing.
Besides, freedom of speech. He's got the right
to tell about anyone, not to do just about anything. Another beautiful thing about America.
Now explain why a version of LAPACK that they tuned the hell out of, and released the source to, isn't better. Trust me, if LAPACK was GPL'ed, scientists would still demand it, and the vendors would comply.
On the other hand, this argument directly contradicts the argument that radioactive wastes haver half-lives in the millions of years.
Waste disposal becomes simpler when you consider that the radioactivity of the waste drops below the natural ore after 5000 years, not the "millions" usually claimed as the time needed for them to decay. Most of the radioactivity is lost in less time than that.
By your logic, the economy would be better served by spending $1,000,000 to buy a candy bar. The economy benefits when the allocation of goods and services is efficient, when things sell at their market clearing price. If linux has changed the dynmaics of the marketplace such that the market clearing price for software is equal to the marginal cost of producing another copy (which, bizarrely is where goods are supposed to be priced in a free market), so be it. Why expend
resources in an inefficient manner. If, as linux denonstrates, quality software can be created in the absence of government-enforced monopolies (copyright), then it is the more efficient solution.
Or is it only when government intervention creates millionares that it doesn't damage society?
Nice persecution complex. "They" wanted to crush tapes, and failed. VCRs, and failed. Ectetera. Do you see the US government collapsing into feudalism any time soon, as well?
Digital audio tapes, and pretty much succeeded. MP3, jury's still out, may or may not succeed (I'm bettting not), Napster (probable success). The copyright industries are getting better at crushing things that worry them. Not that all this is relevant to a MS discussion:)
Re:Thank you VERY fucking much, IBM
on
CPRM Voted Down
·
· Score: 1
Actually, I spoke to people from the cash register division at Linux World Expo, and they're pretty gung-hp about linux.
Actually, it's the same LEP's. (well, in part) Same basic materials. They're just still getting better. So it isn't that their claims didn't pan out, but that development is still going forward. Now actually usable displays are being made, even if not competetively with LCD's. 5 years ago it was all talk. Seems to me things are on track.
They made $15.2M in gross profit, (price of stuff sold - cost to make stuff), with $20.4M in operating expences (R&D, marketing, etc.) and had 4.6M in other income (interest? beats me what), for an adjusted (for non-business revenue) net loss of 600k. This works out to a loss of
The really lost millions of dollars is the $-5M of adjusted net income they had this time last year. Or the $5M they lost on their "normal business" not offset by the income they recieved from "other sources".
The adjustment's never factored in, 'cause, well, they did make those $4.6M somehow. Now, it would be nice if someday they showed an operating profit, but this is still good news.
Well, since it's perfectly legal to take public domain works, and incoportate them in your own work, without losing copyright on the combined work, sure. Just like hollywood can use shakespeares plays and copyright the resulting movie.
Slashdot Mirror
And in defense of the person complaining about the .so file, it was, IIRC, not designed in the first
place as a library. They took his program, librarified it (under the GPL), then "just linked"
to it, to create their program.
And the point is, you're not allowed to link to GPL code, unless yours is GPL'ed. Sorta like "you can't link to our library without paying".
Admittedly, life being what it is, it doesn't always work out to work that way, and people think they won't get caught, etc....
None have perfectly reached their optimal strategy, but the incidence of "I want a dollar, give it to me or I will hit you with this stick" is much lower than the number of people who have access to sticks and would like an additional dollar, so the trust building thing we call "law" and laws against "robbery" must be doing some good.
They had some proprietary add-ons, but as I gather, most of their revenue was from support contracts, and programming contracts (make GCC work on our new computer).
On the other hand, Tux's performance was recently replicated in user space. Linux reall does have kick-ass TCP/IP performance these days.
Shoving all that under "capabilities" and then arguing that since win2k outshines linux in the granularity of it's permissions model borders on dishonest. Security-feature wise, SELinux is in a whole different ballpark (B1) from both win2k and Linux.
Pretending that that patch was necessary to get Linux to be as secure as NT is dishonest (or ignorant).
what a big deal that was. Really. I'm terrified of doing "apt-get install samba" now.
Christ, Redhat installs too damn many daemons on every machine. FTP a big deal? I have to go to new installs and turn it off.
I'm not saying it's harder on NT, but man, I wanna know what you've been smoking to think it's a big deal on linux.
OLED's are in diapers. I have no doubt (and I work in the field) the stability problems can be licked.
I do not mean to rule out the possiblity of physiological effects by this argument, but they will, at these energy densities, not be related to heating. Comparing the energy from your phone to a bag of sugar being dropped on your head is a silly comparison. A more direct one is one involving energy transfer due to electromagnetic radiation, which I provided, and demonstrated that it was, in pure energy terms, small.
It's approximately also the energy in the sunlight falling on a 10" square, on a dim day. On a bright day you've got at least that much heating your skill. So... Don't use cell phones (especially don't point the antenna at your eye, duh.), and stay inside on sunny days.
As far as giving the drives to schools being as good as handing them to the baddie-o-week, no, it's not. Massive disappearances of hard drives from schools would be noticed by the schools, reported to the feds, and appropriate action taken.
Furthermore recovering overwritten data does require something more than spending 10 minutes using it in a classroom. The data may, or may not be recoverable once overwritten, and the drive may, or may not be accessable to them. Oh, yes, it's possible that there will be some leakage of somewhat sensitive data, but it's going to be a very, very, low bandwidth channel, and not very profitable to try to exploit.
Nuclear testing's been mentioned. Other massive computing efforts include theoretical protien chemistry, astronomy, particle accelerator analysis, weather simulation, materials reserch (more theoretical chemistry). Getting good excited state properties of molecular systems scales as the 12th power of your basis set size. Doubling the size of the system you're looking at increaces computational effort by a factor of 4000. It's like, real easy to chew up unlimited amounts of computer power in computational science.
There's the coal ash too, it doesn't all seep into the atmosphere. The coal ash is even 100ppm od so Uranium..... The ash heaps make pretty good memorials themselves though...
Besides, aren't you telling us what freedom means?
(not, btw, to dispute that the GPL makes more restrictions than the BSD license, but it is inaccurate to put "socialist" as the diametrical opposite of "freedom")
RMS believes that the creation of proprietary software has negative externalities. He will, even, admit that they're smaller than, say, dumping PCB's in the rivers. But still, it is a valid reason to tell companies not to do that thing.
Besides, freedom of speech. He's got the right to tell about anyone, not to do just about anything. Another beautiful thing about America.
Now explain why a version of LAPACK that they tuned the hell out of, and released the source to, isn't better. Trust me, if LAPACK was GPL'ed, scientists would still demand it, and the vendors would comply.
Waste disposal becomes simpler when you consider that the radioactivity of the waste drops below the natural ore after 5000 years, not the "millions" usually claimed as the time needed for them to decay. Most of the radioactivity is lost in less time than that.
Or is it only when government intervention creates millionares that it doesn't damage society?
Actually, I spoke to people from the cash register division at Linux World Expo, and they're pretty gung-hp about linux.
Actually, it's the same LEP's. (well, in part) Same basic materials. They're just still getting better. So it isn't that their claims didn't pan out, but that development is still going forward. Now actually usable displays are being made, even if not competetively with LCD's. 5 years ago it was all talk. Seems to me things are on track.
The adjustment's never factored in, 'cause, well, they did make those $4.6M somehow. Now, it would be nice if someday they showed an operating profit, but this is still good news.
Well, since it's perfectly legal to take public domain works, and incoportate them in your own work, without losing copyright on the combined work, sure. Just like hollywood can use shakespeares plays and copyright the resulting movie.